Page 5 of The Lady on Esplanade
I could picture her rolling her eyes.“I am.But I snuck my phone into school so I could excuse myself to use the bathroom during class and talk to you in private.I don’t want Mom to hear.”
A smattering of gooseflesh erupted down my spine.“Oh, okay.What’s up?”I forced a light tone.“You want me to tell Jolene you don’t want the Barbie head?”
“Um, no.It’s something else.”
I waited for her to continue, the gooseflesh rippling along my skin as a ball of dread congealed in the pit of my stomach.
“I got a phone call from Great-grandma Sarah.On Mom’s landline.The one that’s not plugged in or anything.”
My gaze drifted to my own unplugged telephone sitting on top of the ancient teacher’s desk in the dining room.Melanie’s deceased grandmother Sarah had called me on that phone, too, but mercifully she had been silent ever since the spirit showdown in the Ryans’ attic.I’d tried hiding the old phone in the back of my closet, but it kept reappearing on the desk, in the exact spot from where it had been removed.I’d considered taking it to a dumpster, but I had chosen not to when the phone had stopped ringing.After listening to my sister, I was rethinking my decision.
“Yeah?Did she have anything interesting to say?”
“Hang on.”Her words were muffled, as if she was holding her cell phone against her chest, and then all I could hear was the sound of a distant door clanging shut, followed shortly afterward by a toilet flushing and water running.“That was close.I had to duck into a stall.That was Holly McCormick, and if she’d caught me she would have gone straight to the head of school’s office.”
“So, what did Grandma Sarah have to say?”I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice.
She paused, and I could hear her breathing into the phone.
“Sarah?”
“Do you remember that fortune teller we saw at Jackson Square that day we all had lunch at Muriel’s?”
“Yeah.It was right before we saw the wet footprints and you saw Beau’s mom.Adele.”
“Like the singer.”Sarah’s voice was so quiet I could barely hear her.
“That’s right.And Adele said something to you.”
“She told me that she wanted to help Beau.”
“And she said to decide what’s worth the fight and let the rest go—among other things.I remember.”
“Yeah, well, Grandma Sarah said that again today on the phone.”
I closed my eyes, wondering why I had bothered to wake up today.
“She said that you needed to go talk to Madame Zoe about Buddy.I have no clue who she was talking about, and I was hoping that you might.”
I cleared my throat.“Madame Zoe is the fortune teller.Buddy is Beau’s dad.Madame Zoe stopped by a few weeks ago.She didn’t stay to chat, just long enough to say that Beau needed me and that I needed to bring him to her so they could talk about Buddy.Madame Zoe apparently knew him.He also disappeared during Katrina.”
“He’s not dead,” Sarah said matter-of-factly.
“I sort of figured, since we haven’t seen his footprints following us around, although I’m not sure why he’s stayed gone all this time if he’s still alive.I’m sure that’s part of Beau’s anger toward his parents.”
She didn’t respond.“Sarah?You still there?”
“I’m here.”I listened as she breathed in, then out, my nerves on high alert.
“There’s one more thing she wanted me to tell you, and I don’t know how you’re going to take it.”
I sat down hard in my recently vacated chair, my knees wobbly.Mardi stopped whining for his food and rested his head and paws on my feet.That was the thing about dogs.They were better than most people at sensing things that we couldn’t see or feel—or that we preferred to pretend weren’t there.
“She kept saying the word ‘bones,’ and then there was a sound like…sucking mud—like when we’d dig for clams in the marsh.”
“ ‘Bones’ and sucking mud,” I repeated.A flash of lightning flared from the window, followed by a roar of thunder.Mardi shuffled under my chair for protection but returned his paw to rest on my foot.
A song began blasting in my ear, drowning out Sarah’s voice.“Do you hear that?”I shouted.If she replied, I couldn’t hear it.The call ended, abruptly stopping the music.I placed the phone on the table, not wanting to drop it from my shaking hand, the familiar tune still in my head, its words on a seeming loop.“Rolling in the Deep” byAdele.I wanted to believe that it was a coincidence that Beau’s mother’s name was Adele—but as my father, Jack, had often said, there was no such thing as coincidence.
